Highest GMATs &
Salaries in Europe
INSEAD has come out on top of a new ranking of the
best European business schools. The school, with campuses in Fontainebleau,
France, and Singapore, topped the list of 20 business schools. Right behind it
were No. 2London Business School,
No. 3 IMD in
Lausanne, Switzerland, No. 4 IE Business School in
Madrid, Spain, and No. 5 IESE Business School in
Barcelona, Spain.
The survey, published recently by BusinessWeek, is based
solely upon the opinions of international corporate recruiters conducted by an
MBA tour company, QS Quacquarelli Symonds. BusinessWeek did not report the
number of respondents to the survey nor the response rate.
It
would be easy to criticize this ranking of European schools. In the top 20, for
example, Manchester Business School, ranked highly by The Financial Times, The
Economist and Forbes, fails to warrant a mention. Neither does City
University’s Cass School or Cranfield in the U.K. Germany, which is not known for
graduate business education, claims three spots out of the top 16 schools.
Largest class size in
Europe: INSEAD with 1,008 students
Far more interesting than the actual ranking, however, is the
comparative data for the schools. By far, the European school with the largest
class size is INSEAD with 1,008 MBA students, compared to IE Business School,
which has the second largest class size at 450 students. Otherwise, most of
these programs are very small, with more than half of the 20 admitting class
sizes of under 100 MBA students.
Highest GMAT scores in
Europe: INSEAD and London Business School
The highest reported average GMATs come from INSEAD at 703, some 26 points below Stanford’s 729
average and 21 points below Harvard’s 724. INSEAD’s average is equal to the
University of Michigan’s Ross School and the University of Virginia’s Darden
School. There are now a dozen business schools in the U.S. with higher average
GMAT scores than INSEAD. The second highest average GMAT scores for the
latest entering class is reported by London Business School,
with an average GMAT of 698, which is the average score for Washington
University’s Olin School in St. Louis.
Highest reported
starting salary: IMD
The highest reported starting salary is at IMD in
Lausanne, Switzerland, at $132,852, with Warwick Business School second at
$129,970. Starting salaries at those two European schools bested Stanford’s
$129,652 and Harvard Business School’s $124,085 last year. IMD’s reported
numbers are due to the school’s student population which tends to be older with
more work experience. It’s unclear how Warwick’s starting salaries could exceed
Stanford, Harvard, INSEAD or London Business School.
INSEAD reported starting salaries of $102,888 and London Business School at
$110,606. Another surprise in the numbers is the difference in starting
salaries between IESE Business School in
Barcelona, Spain, and IE Business School in
Madrid. IESE reported
average starting salary of $113,512 vs. $89,602 for rival IE Business School,
a difference of $23,910.
Most expensive MBA
program in Europe: HEC Paris
The most expensive MBA program in Europe? According to this
list, it’s HEC Paris where
the full tuition is $103,860, considerably higher than the one-year program at INSEAD which costs $66,877 in tuition or London Business School with
an $87,164 pricetag. The least expensive? The MBA program at Warsaw University
of Technology where the entire tuition is just $12,728.
